BREAKPOINT : The Crisis of the Middle Class and the Future of Work
India's roughly 40 million tax-paying professionals, earning between ₹5 lakh and ₹1 crore yearly, find themselves at a dangerous crossroads. The post-1991 spending-fuelled boom that built the nation's prosperity is buckling under three relentless pressures simultaneously. Robots and algorithms are wiping out white-collar roles quicker than employers can create fresh ones. Paycheques stagnate even as costs for basics like food, medicine and transport soar into double digits. Families are borrowing at levels that dwarf even America's and China's debt burdens. The numbers tell a stark story. Nearly a third of graduates hunt fruitlessly for work while illiterate Indians find jobs more readily. Technology is hollowing out India's once-mighty software industry, with hundreds of thousands facing redundancy. Meanwhile, ordinary savers have watched ₹35,000 crore vanish into failed trades. Consumer goods companies are slowing dramatically, with volume growth plummeting from double digits to barely a quarter of that. Since household spending drives three-fifths of economic output, India's growth engine faces genuine peril. Yet doom isn't inevitable. This investigation, from the sharp mind behind Coffee Can Investing, marshals hard evidence to trace how we got here. Hidden within the turmoil sits something unexpected: a groundswell of business-building activity, spurred by smarter policies and shifting cultural acceptance. Could this grassroots uprising ultimately reshape the economy itself?
- Author: Saurabh Mukherjea
- Publisher: Juggernaut
- Genre: Economics
- ISBN: 978-9353452254
- Pages: 280 pages